Call me 'Apple'

The only workday in November deader than the day after Thanksgiving is the day before Thanksgiving. But I'm not going out of town and I'm only cooking one or two simple dishes, so I have absolutely no excuse for taking off early. Besides, it's going to be hard enough to go back to work after four straight days of idleness; why make it any harder for myself?

Last night, on my second cat-care trip to Portage Park, I decided to check out the cozy little Meisa Cafe. Previously, I'd done grilled meat at neighbouring Las Tablas, but the sausages and dumplings of Eastern Europe are closer to my Teutonic ideal of comfort food than the churrascos and yucca fries of Colombia. The first surprise I had was that the owners aren't Polish, they're Bosnian. And Meisa isn't the name of a homey Slavic matron, but an acronym of the a woman, her husband, and their son.

So instead of getting kiełbasa, I dined on ćevapi, which I correctly surmised were kissing cousins to Serbian ćevapčići, though made without pork as you'd expect from Muslims. What I didn't anticipate was how innocuous they'd be; the menu said "spicy", but there wasn't enough spice in them to startle a little old lady from Pasadena. Mixing some mutton into the ground beef would've given them more character. There was plenty of ajvar on the side, but it was also surprisingly bland.

Which was fine with me, because as much as I love spicy food, my tolerance for it continues to deteriorate and anything more exciting for dinner than a piece of bacon is pretty much guaranteed to keep me up past my bedtime. The sausages were served on a big piece of homemade lepinja, a fluffy and slightly sour flatbread made with bleached flour, which I tore off in bits so I could pick up the sausages with my fingers.

As a result, the only real flavour surprise came from a wrong soda called--believe it or not--Cockta. Both the owner and the Rumanian waitress described this as resembling root beer, but I didn't taste that at all. It's like a cola with a shot of fruity flavouring. (Rose hips, as it turns out). But the best part of dinner was the homemade apple strudel (or pita od jabuka), which I was told other Bosnian restaurants don't make because it is "too much trouble". (Shades of your retés experiences, bitterlawngnome!) Outstanding.

After the fat old man across the room left, I was the only paying customer in the room, so Alma (the "a" of "Meisa") chatted with me quite a bit. It turns out she'd lived in Germany before coming to the US. There was a raucous discussion going on between a half dozen of what were presumably her relatives at a table in the corner, but the only word I caught was "meksikanci". As I was leaving, a (pretty hot) man in cook's duds wished me good night and I replied "Do viđenja!" Immediately, the entire table wished me a rousing farewell in Bosnian.

See, that's why it's much better to know how to say "Goodbye!" in a foreign language than "Hello!" If all you can do is greet someone, then their initial enthusiasm quickly sours when they realise that's all you can say. But by saying "Goodbye", you manage to leave on a high note--with the added bonus of knowing that they're rapidly reliving the past hour or two of conversation to determine whether they said anything that they really didn't want an outsider to hear. Priceless!